scaled object not reflecting light

[wetblanket]

The vanilla static "architecture\farmhouse\farmhouseconstruction05.nif" appears very dark beyond a certain scale without ambient light. With ambient light or quite small it appears correctly. Is this a limitation I have to live with or can I do something to make it appear correctly at larger scales? I have tried changing the texture to no avail. Would a larger/higher res texture work?

[Hanaisse]

You could try changing the NiMaterialProperty Ambient colour in Nifskope to 1's (equal to #ffffff). Could also play around with the Specular colour the same way.

[wetblanket]

Thanks Hanaisse. Unfortunately no change. I think there is some problem with the way Oblivion handles light. If I move the rooms main light source ('candelier') further away, this particular object is better lit! If I scale it down without moving the light it is better lit. Doesn't make sense to me.

[grond]

Maybe it would fix it if you import to blender and set its scale to what you'd like.

[Hanaisse]

Just how big are you scaling it?

Grond may be on to something by altering the size in blender.

[Vince]

After you scale a mesh, you need to right click on the NiTriStripsData then Mesh > Update Center/Radius. You did that, right?

[wetblanket]

After you scale a mesh, you need to right click on the NiTriStripsData then Mesh > Update Center/Radius. You did that, right?

'

I was scaling in the CS so no. In case it isn't already obvious, this is all very new to me! Learning Blender is too much at this stage. The CS and NifSkope are more than enough to chew on.

Since I posted I found something called 'HOUSE MODDER'S TOOL KIT' by Vince Bly (you? - if so ). I had more or less given up on the vanilla resource. The docs make mention of exactly what you suggest as regards scaling his primitives in NifSkope. There is mention of x1.2 being a limit before having to Update Center/Radius. I was scaling in CS to x1.4 or so.

So my new plan of attack is to try scaling in NifSkope, doing as you say. If that fails then try making my own with Vince Bly's kit. Thanks for the help everybody and I'll let you know how I get on.

edit. Re-scaled in NifSkope and updated Center/Radius. Certainly better. Still much darker than the house interior even though using the same texture.

edit. Made a new texture and normal map twice the size of the original. That and the NifSkope work means it's a pretty close match. I may yet make an even bigger version since scaling down doesn't seem to cause the problems scaling up does in the CS. The lighting is another issue. I'll have to use a fake light way off center and replace the real candelier with a fake. Cheers all.

Edited August 18, 2010 by wetblanket

[Vince]

wetblanket, you say "... appears very dark beyond a certain scale without ambient light". I would like to reproduce the effect you describe, So, please explain exactly what you mean by "ambient light", since clearly you don't mean without any light at all. BTW, surprisingly, the Ambient and Diffuse material colors in the .nif file have no effect in game, although they do make a difference in the NifSkope render. And, yes, I am the author of the HMTK.

So, please do describe the original issue as precisely as you can and I'll see what I can do to understand it and help you if I can.

[wetblanket]

In the CS, if you select 'edit' on a cell the resulting dialog box has a 'Lighting' tab. That tab has an RGB setting for 'Ambient'. When I say no ambient light, all RGB values are set to zero. My understanding of ambient light (from CAD) is even non-directional light, I'm assuming it is the same in the CS. Three vanilla items are in play here:

- "architecture\lowerclass\houselowerinterior02.nif" the interior mesh

- "architecture\farmhouse\farmhouseconstruction05.nif" the beam

- "World Objects\Light\Lights\Candelier01Orange512" the primary light source

This shows the arrangement of objects - I made a loft out of variously scaled instances of the beam mesh. The light coloured handrail uses the same mesh as the dark beam below and the central dark column. The two pale columns on the right are part of the interior mesh. I placed darker column between for comparison. The candelier is placed centrally. If it is moved further away from the dark beams more light seems to fall on them and they appear lighter. Also if the dark components are scaled down they become lighter.

I think that's sufficient to replicate.

[Vince]

wetblanket, your understanding of ambient lighting is correct. Your description is sufficient for me to reproduce the problem. Yes, I do see the issue you describe.

Unfortunately, that's the end of the good news. You are where I was about 3 years ago. Just as I did then, you want to take bits and pieces of existing objects to make other objects, like your loft. This is where it gets really strange! When I was where you are now, I wanted to make the framework for a wooden chandelier. So I took the farmhouseconstruction05 object, made copies of it and made the framework for my chandelier. Today, to investigate your problem, I took the farmhouseconstruction05 object, made a 1/2 size and a 2X size copy, illuminated them with the Candelier01Orange512, and verified that the larger copy appeared much darker than the smaller version. I then made 1/2 and 2X versions of my wooden chandelier frame and found that both scaled versions were about the same lightness! I looked at the .nif for both and verified that they are using the same textures (like textures\wood\woodpost01.dds).

So: making scaled copies of farmhouseconstruction05 shows the lighting issue you describe, but scaled copies of an object constructed from farmhouseconstruction05 does not! 'Very strange. I will continue to investigate this.

[wetblanket]

It cheers me up no end to know it wasn't just me being particularly dense . Thanks for your continuing efforts.

[Vince]

Ok, I've solved it. First, see the image below. You will see that the 1/2 size FarmHouseConstruction05 (FHC5 from now on) on the left appears lit as it should, but the 2X version is much too dark. On the right, you can see the 1/2 size and 2X size versions of the wooden frame I made from the FHC5 both of which appear lit as they should.

Now, after a process that I will describe in a moment, you can see in the image below that both versions of the FHC5 appear lit correctly.

The problem was caused by an issue in how the mesh normals were smoothed in the copy of FHC5 in the .bsa. So, what you need to do is have a copy of the FHC5 .nif freshly extracted from the .bsa. This way you can be sure that you are starting with a copy in its original state. Open this copy in NifSkope and perform the following steps:

1> Right click on FarmHouseConstruction05:3, then Mesh > Face Normals.

2> Right click on FarmHouseConstruction05:3, then Mesh > Smooth Normals, then click Smooth in the popup dialog box.

3> Right click on FarmHouseConstruction05:3, then Mesh > Update Tangent Space.

4> Repeat the three steps above for FarmHouseConstruction05:4.

5> Save the file.

Now, create a new static object in the CS based on this processed .nif file and you're good to go.

The issue with the normals is complex and probably not something you want to worry about until you begin 3D modeling yourself. This particular issue is relatively rare in the vanilla Oblivion meshes. If you are really curious, see the draft of Blender2Oblivion Session 3 in the Modeling forum.

Based on what you have been trying to do, the HMTK should be very useful to you. If you run into a problem, I or others here that use it (Khettienna for one) should be able to help you. Also, the UpDate Center/Radius I mentioned is only necessary if you change the scale in the .nif file. It is not required if you change the scale in the CS. As before, good luck.

[wetblanket]

Brilliant . Looks great in game and I was able to delete a bunch of fake lights I had added to try and get the faulty surfaces lit correctly. I'm about done but the FPS fluctuates wildly from 10-40 depending where I'm looking so some optimisation is called for I think. There's currently a lot of bodging eg. some apparently simple shelves either side of a fireplace are actually whole bookcases protruding slightly into the interior. Your kit will be very useful here. I'm probably going over the top as far as the exam is concerned but, from my point of view, the purpose of the exercise is to make a house for me, the exam being secondary. Plus it's fun if frustrating at times. Thanks for the help, HMTK kit and encouragement .